


Reflection & Retribution

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: CSI: Miami
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-07
Updated: 2006-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Calleigh reflects on her coworkers, wondering what triggered the changes and why the prices had to be paid the way they did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflection & Retribution

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I hated the last couple episodes this season; the writers threw Horatio’s character out the window, and that is the perspective Calleigh takes here.
> 
> Spoilers: 2x23 ["MIA/NYC Non-Stop"]; 3x01 ["Lost Son"]; 3x09 ["Pirated"]; 4x25 ["One of Our Own"]

_Who is he?_ I ask myself, sitting out behind headquarters. _Where the hell did he disappear to?_

I’d gotten the notice not two hours ago: I was to serve as secondary supervisor; Horatio—and Eric, for that matter—were taking two weeks of personal leave. As the more senior of those in the lab, my position was understandable. Given recent events, their leave was understandable. The circumstances, on the other hand, were _not_ understandable.

Because I knew that Marisol Delko Caine’s death was not the sole reason for their absence. I’d heard Horatio in the locker room, talking to Eric, and neither had realized I was there.

 _“We leave for Brazil tonight. Three hours, and our plane leaves. We finish this.”_

I couldn’t say anything. In truth, I was almost afraid to. Never, in all my years working with Horatio, had I ever been _afraid_ of him—I had never had reason to be. But the man that had been in there, saying those words, was _not_ the Horatio I had met when I began working for him.

I knew Antonio Riaz had cut a deal with the FBI. Frankly, I doubted the information he claimed to have, but that wasn’t my problem, nor was it my place. But he’d been flown out to Brazil—and there was no way that both my colleagues had had the same trip planned for such a coincidental time on all three levels. So he was lying—again. Until now, I had never believed that those two words—“lying,” and “again”—could possibly be used together in association with Horatio, unless they were describing the things he would never do, but I can’t believe that anymore.

When he told the D.A. that Memmo Fierro attacked one of his officers in the Everglades, thereby explaining the state he’d returned in—and given the fact that I processed the man, I should know—I assume he didn’t realize I was still in earshot, because I found Eric later and asked him if he was all right, mentioned that I’d heard Fierro resisted arrest. Only Eric had gone with Horatio that day, so that left him as the obvious choice. He’d brushed it off with a smile, saying he was fine, but his eyes said otherwise—his eyes said that Fierro had done nothing then. He may have been at least partially responsible for his sister’s death, but he hadn’t tried to hurt an officer when they’d taken him down.

And when they caught Riaz trying to incinerate that plane? I _know_ more happened than just a "routine" takedown, if there really is such a thing. Sure, justified shots were fired, but I know those two, and their eyes tell a different story. Horatio can be as intimidating as a charging bull when he wants to be, and I’ve seen Eric lose his temper on more than one occasion, but they don’t make empty threats, and they don’t forsake their integrity. Or at least, they never did before.

But ever since Marisol was shot, I’ve been watching those two disappear before my eyes, and I have to wonder if it was my blindness to their characters that disillusioned me or if their acting skills had been too perfected.

Horatio has been the man who would lay down his life to protect those he loved, who would do whatever it took to protect his people, to fight for the lab he believed in. But never, never would he forsake his integrity, his honor, the very essence that made him _Horatio_. And watching him now, I so desperately want that man back, from wherever he’s disappeared to.

Where’s the man who gave his heart to a child to prove that he wasn’t alone? Where’s the man who supported me when Speed died? Where’s the man who flew to New York solely to fulfill a promise to a brutally orphaned teenager?

Wherever he is, he needs to come back, because whoever’s impersonating Horatio does a damn good job of looking like him, but he can’t represent him _worth_ a damn. _No one_ can capture Horatio, and if he hasn’t had a personality transplant, I’m a fish.

Then there’s Eric… I thought I knew him… Sure, the hot-blooded Cuban that he was, he’d yell at the occasional suspect in interrogation, throw himself into his work when it hit him, and maybe he did suddenly lose drive after his sister was diagnosed, but the most I saw there was depression, not insanity. There was hurt, there was anger, there were questions of why, but I wasn’t afraid he’d kill the next person who crossed his path.

Now I don’t trust either of them—if they can’t find themselves, who can? I can’t speak up; looking at the two of them, they’d probably shoot me on the spot if they knew I’d heard them. At this point, it’s not as though the Feds are still here, and I’m not worried about the lab, but I’m waiting for the notice that the two of them aren’t coming back—they’ll either be dead or they’ll be in jail.

I sigh and stand slowly—my depressing ruminations are not going to solve the problems, and I now have a mountain of paperwork to attack. Tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m heading home, to do something other than work—I don’t care if I end up sleeping at seven this evening; I just need to get out of here, and not even my beloved guns can solve this. I walk into the locker room almost hesitantly, even though I know they’ve already left, and I find Ryan still there, to my surprise.

“Ryan? What are you still doing here?”

He jumps visibly, and looks up at me. “Hey, Calleigh. Getting ready to leave.” He hesitates a minute, and I can see the strain he’s under—losing a brother officer is never easy, and Ryan knew Jessop better than the rest of us—and knowing him, that cursed interrogation took its toll. “I hear H and Eric are on leave.”

Now it’s my turn to hesitate—that wasn’t what I expected him to say. “Yeah…” I answer instead, hoping he’ll drop it, and to my relief, he does. It’s not that I don’t trust him—it’s that I have no idea how to express all this to someone else.

“Do you want to go for drinks—grab something to eat?” I ask suddenly, surprising even myself. But he looks like he could use an escape about as much as I could.

His surprise seems to mirror my own, but he nods slowly. “Sure, Calleigh…”

We both grab our things from our lockers, but my gaze falls on a framed photo on my shelf: me, Horatio, Eric, Speed, Alexx, and Frank, caught entirely unawares at a picnic table, laughing at something that was probably more than absurd. If only we could recapture that, because that spirit is now long gone, and there’s an ache left in its place.

“Things change, Calleigh… Too fast,” he tells me, even though he can’t see what I’m looking at, and I nod, turning to face him as I shut my door.

“And it never makes sense, does it?”

“The wrong people always pay the price.” And now I see the liquid pain in his grey eyes.

I take a deep breath and touch his shoulder. “There’s retribution. Always, no matter what form it comes in.”

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated._


End file.
